


Like a Sunless Garden

by haldolhs



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance, SebaCiel - Freeform, Smut, adult!ciel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 09:33:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3845917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haldolhs/pseuds/haldolhs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With my hapless, deranged love I’ve planted a seed in a barren garden and have somehow cultivated a covetous and ravenous weed intent on sapping the sun of all its radiance and vitality before it obliterates the cold, bitter stone that remains.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Sunless Garden

 

Although it’s been less than a month since I last appeased my most damnable craving, my incessant hunger has again grown ravenous and cannibalistic, rendering me so hollow and cold I should like to scream against the intensity of my visceral pain.

Instead I lay quietly awake on our bed, my wife draped across my bare chest, and stare up into the shadows. Lizzie’s warmth rolls off my chilled skin as if repelled, as if my flesh is encased by an impermeable shell like a physical manifestation of the invulnerable façade I must wear day in and out.

She breathes a contented sigh and snuggles against me, deeply asleep and comfortable despite the knotted ropes of muscle within her pillow. What would she think, I wonder, if she knew how often I envied her softness and her trusting vulnerability, her sense of security, the open ease with which she accepts and bestows affection . . . Perhaps she does know. Too often I see wistfulness in her green eyes, as if she wishes she might find a way to hold me even when I’m in her arms.

Struggle though I do to give what remains of myself to her, I’m irretrievably beyond her reach. Even though she searches intently, she doesn’t see.

Perhaps it’s best she doesn’t, for if she ever glimpsed the pathetic, agonized child at the core of the man she married, how would she ever look at me again?

Somewhere beyond our chamber door I hear a distant grandfather clock chime twice. Too soon the sun will rise on a world of malcontent and greed, and I will have to crawl once more into its diseased underbelly in attempt to expunge the worst of its rot. Such is the purpose of The Earl of Phantomhive. Her Majesty will care not whether her dog is well and rested, so long as he’s able to fetch and kill and heel on command—and should he fail . . . well, there’s a fresh pup who’s already begun to wean just down the hall.

_Close your eyes. Go to sleep, Ciel._

I tell myself I wish I could . . . I try to convince myself I’d like nothing more than to nestle my face against Lizzie’s silken hair and find her within her dreams. Perhaps there I might become the man she pretends I am . . . a man who belongs to her, who loves her beyond all others.

_I try, Elizabeth. I fight and deny with what little I have left, but . . ._

The gnawing pain at my core tells me, quite unnecessarily, that I’ll never be hers. Nor will sleep grant me brief escape from the demands of my soul, from my overwhelming and wretched need to be seen and accepted and . . . touched.

_I’m losing his game, Lizzie. What’s worse? It’s becoming harder and harder to convince myself I shouldn’t let him win._

I hug Lizzie close, lift her from the bed, and then gently lay her down again. She slips out of my arms and puddles against the silk sheets with another soft sigh, and then curls onto her side without waking.

After removing the medical patch from my right eye, I’ve no need for a lamp, for the demon’s mark emblazoned across my iris awakens to my intent and lights my way. I slip into my robe and pad barefoot out into the dark hall.

Our bond leads me through the silent manor, down the stairs and through a labyrinth of narrow hallways beyond the kitchens to an end room with a window facing out over the rose garden, which has just begun to bloom.

There’s no need to knock, for he knew I was coming even before I left my bedchambers. The brass doorknob feels warm beneath my palm and welcoming as it turns in my grip.

Dim candlelight throws flickering shadows over barren walls, across his smooth, pale skin, dances within his cherrywood eyes which I meet and hold even before I cross the threshold. Propped upon one arm, he watches me approach from a bed dressed in white silk and pulls back the covers, inviting me.

Despite the many times I’ve beheld his nudity, I am, as always, overcome by his beauty. He is a study of contrasts made flesh; onyx and ivory, pallor and blush, strength and grace. While my starved gaze roams over his leanly sculpted perfection, my body thrums and my blood races. My hard veneer cracks.

The door snicks closed and the lock tumbles into place of its own accord as I shrug out of my robe and lower onto his bed.

He opens his arms to me and I slide wordlessly into them. With a satisfied sigh he enfolds me within his full embrace, and the last of my crumbling shell disintegrates beneath the glide of his hand over my spine. I shudder with sudden, weightless relief and melt against him, closing my eyes as I relish his heat.

He holds me close until I am warmed through, and then he threads his fingers through my hair and gently tilts my head back. “Look at me, Ciel.”

With his caramel-coated issue of my given name, he frees me completely. I need not be his Master or anyone’s Lord. I’m not the earl of anything, and I’m no one’s dog. Within his arms, I am simply Ciel.

As I open my eyes and bare my soul to its possessor, my heart aches for the power to simplify _him._ Would that I could reduce him to a mere man with only the murmur of the name I gave him when I was a child, but he will eternally be my death and my damnation if not my butler, my sword and my shield.

“Sebastian,” I try, because, despite futility, I must. Because the broken spirit of the whimsical child I once was, because the aching soul of the once joyful boy who only _he_ can see and soothe, has long since fallen in love with him beyond all arguments of my stubborn and formidable reason.

His irises brighten from cherrywood to blood, the edge of his constant hunger sharpened by everything he reads in my eyes, which have always revealed to _him_ all I’d kill to keep hidden . . . even that which I endeavor to hide from myself.

His fingers slip from my hair. He trails them gently over my temple and traces the contour of my jaw, his expression almost reverent and so _tender,_ making it all too easy to pretend that he returns my damnable affection. A wry smile curves my lips as I redraw the part between his with a fingertip and promise myself that one night he will claim the prize he has long since earned and devour the soul he continues to cultivate, even now.

“Shh,” he whispers, as if I’d spoken aloud. His hand folds over mine and he draws it down from his mouth to his hip, where I resume my tactile explorations over the swell of his firm buttock. Sebastian hums his approval and brushes his lips over mine.

Such a nothing little kiss, not but a wisp of contact, yet lightning rips down my spine and arches my back. Heat floods and stiffens my thickened arousal. “Sebastian,” I moan, rutting my hard cock against his silken erection as I tangle my fingers deep within his sleek, black hair and futilely strain to close the sudden inches-wide chasm between our mouths. “ _Sebastian_. . .”  

“ _Shh._ ” He presses a finger to my lips and pulls his hips maddeningly back from mine. “Nearly a month you’ve denied me all but the occasional glance of longing. Three endless weeks you’ve suffered me to shave your face and comb your hair and tie your cravats without stealing a single kiss. Twenty-one eternal days I’ve labored intently at your hand, with which you bestowed endless waves of dismissal but not one ‘accidental’ caress . . .”

“Stop teasing me, Sebastian,” I groan. The molten caramel timbre of his voice sets the ache of my desire to throb, and, try as I might, I just can’t seem to pull him _closer_.

“Ah, but it is _you_ who has teased _me._ ” He chuckles lightly, heat flashing within his eyes. “Mercilessly. As if you have no conception of just how much I _crave_ your affection, Ciel. And now that you’re finally in my arms, I intend to savor you. Slowly.”

At his words, my heart stutters and then races. I search his intent gaze for a tell-tale smirk of insincerity and find only my own desire mirrored within his searing eyes.

_He’s not beholden to me anymore. I’m his to do with as he pleases, and he’s playing me as expertly as he does a pawn across the chessboard . . ._

“Ciel,” he breathes and allows me to draw him close at long last. His lips graze over mine, and then again, and again, his kiss deepening with each pass as our legs entwine and our rigid cocks press flush, pulsing against each other in tandem as if we are possessed of a shared heart.

_He hasn’t a heart. His body is nothing more than a beautiful lie . . ._

Indeed, but when his warm velvet tongue sweeps past my parted lips and rolls over mine, I know for certain I don’t care in the least _._ Sebastian tastes like a replenishing rain, like the promise of salvation, and I want nothing more than to drown in him forever.

_Lie to me . . ._

His moan vibrates over my tongue, tingles down my spine and up through my taut, weeping prick. I tighten my arms around him, dig my fingers into his flesh, aching for more contact even though we’re pressed cock to cock, breast to breast, mouth to mouth, tongues tangled in fervent exploration . . .I can’t . . .can’t get close enough . . .

A cry of frustration wells within me, but then his essence caresses the forsaken child who still screams within the very pit of my core and calms me. His soul asks mine if I want him, asks if my answer remains now as I’d declared when I was chained helpless and dying to a gore-streaked stone, and I wonder, as always, what he would do should I say I _didn’t_ want him—What would he do if I told him I harbored regret and ached to repent my repugnant soul to God? Would he simply disappear into the inky shadows from whence he came, leaving me to live my life as I might have had I not been tortured and murdered at the age of ten? Would he hover at the periphery, laughing as I floundered in my duties to the Crown without his assistance, ready to snatch up my soul upon my heart’s last beat? Or would he abandon his prize and damn my soul to Hell? Would my eternal torment include forever aching for his scent, his touch, the taste of his kiss, the dark bliss of being enveloped in his essence as intensely as I have every day of these past weeks? Or might I be cast free of his wretched enchantment and rendered able to love Lizzie with the wholes of my black heart and damned soul?

I wonder, but unlike my tongue and my mind and my heart, my soul cannot lie. _I want you, Sebastian. Ask me a million times in a million different ways, and my answer will remain the same._

My soul feels the warmth of his satisfaction the same as my lips feel the rumble of his moan as he tastes me. . .not merely my tongue and the roof of my mouth now, but my heart’s blood jetting forth with each dying beat from the jagged hole left by a silver dagger. He sips tears shed over a decade past, each one tinged with hate and rage and terror and grief, each one a drop of my soul. He licks sweat and filth from bruised and broken skin slowly, laves defilement from each crevice and orifice, thoroughly savoring the detritus of my obliterated faith and tattered innocence until my quivering spirit begs him for ultimate release.

_I’m yours . . .every memory, every hope and fear and torment and desire . . .my soul is yours, Sebastian. Take it . . ._

He won’t, I know . . .not yet. Even though he’s delivered me my vengeance and fulfilled his end of our contract, even though I’m ready and willing, even though an increasingly desperate part of me _aches_ forhim to take what he’s due, it’s not enough for him—not nearly.

As if in confirmation, I feel him retreat. His soul unfurls from mine gently, kissing the sting from eternally open wounds and caressing the ache from my ever-fresh bruises as he goes. His tongue rolls over mine languidly once and then again before he lifts his head and looks at me, his eyes sparking with hellfire. “Have you any idea how terribly you damn me, Ciel?” He croons, grazing the backs of his fingers over the hollow of my cheek. “To bask in your singular radiance and to know I’ll never again experience a light so brilliant . . . It’s the very definition of Hell. If only I could fathom a way to forever keep my cake and eat it, too.”

Oh, yes. The glorious bastard knows exactly how to play me. Does he feel the warmth bloom within my chest at the laughable belief that he is capable of love despite his depravity and selfishness, just as I am? Does he sense how badly I ache to believe I alone possess the power to solicit his noble devotion and become his redemption?

_Of course he does, you simpering fool. . ._

“You damn yourself,” I murmur and roll my hips against his. The slick friction of his thick cock sliding against mine is more delicious than the most decadent chocolate gateau, and a succinct distraction from pathetic romantic notions. “I only ever promised you my soul. Eat and be done with it.”

“Is that how you truly feel?” Those demonic eyes flare with hellish flame as he rolls me beneath him and glides his silken erection against mine in a slow and gentle rhythm. “Perhaps, then, your soul is all you should have offered.”

A licentious moan rips from my throat as I wrap my legs around his hips and thrust up against him, urging an increase of his maddening tempo. “I’ve never offered anything more,” I lie. “You’re the one who seduced me, Devil.”

“Is that so?” With a breathy moan he acquiesces and rocks against me harder, faster. “I recall only heeding my young master’s order, Ciel.”

It’s an old argument, hashed and rehashed too many times to count, and one the build of magnificent pressure within my tortured prick has no interest in debating with him at present. Driven nearly mad with long-repressed desire for Sebastian, in the spring of my seventeenth year—just three short months before he’d fully satisfied his end of our contract—I’d ordered him to deliver to me a skilled and comely whore; one preferably discreet, lest I have to kill her after I’d used her. That very night he’d presented himself at my bedside as usual, but instead of helping me into my night clothes after stripping me to my drawers, he’d dropped to his knees and removed those, too. And then . . .

“Ah! _Sebastian_ . . .” The vivid memory of his hot mouth sinking down over my instant, pulsing erection that first time combined with the spiced-autumn scent of him surrounding me now, with the increasingly guttural sounds of his excitement and exertion, with the exquisite friction of our mating cocks . . . intense waves of pleasure wash over me and thrum through my blood as I’m rushed to the brink. Thighs tightening around him, my nails tear into the flesh between his shoulder blades and claw into his tight, thrusting arse in vehement refusal to plummet over the edge alone. “ _Sebastian!”_

With a pained growl he plunges his hand between us and engulfs us both within his long-fingered grasp. My body tenses in anticipation of his sublime stroke, for his deliverance of the unbridled release I’ve craved since last I left his bed. Instead, he stills his hips and clenches his fingers like a vise, crushing us together at our roots. Pain explodes over my spine, intense as ecstasy and twice as brilliant.

“Tell me what you truly desire,” He says, the hellish light in his eyes brightening as they search mine. “Have you yearned these past weeks for our communion, as I have? It was a hectic day, and the hour is late. Would you curse the certain exhaustion wrought by your spend for robbing us of another hour bared of burden and pretense together, as I would?”

I’m on fire. Every inch of my body burns with a magnificent agony that would surely render me to ash if only he would allow such blissful obliteration. Instead, he looks into me, seeking my unvoiced answers to his questions, and I close my eyes to escape his and the sentiment he lets me imagine I see within them.

“Or . . .”The sudden release of his crushing grip rips the wind from my lungs. My eyes fly open as simultaneous bolts of pain and pleasure jolt through my prick. His hand glides perfectly up our lengths, and then slides back down slowly, the intensity of my desire redoubling in his wake. “Are you eager to return so soon to your wife, your responsibilities, your _facades_? One can grow quite attached to their masks. I would know.”

“I wear no masks,” I lie, and moan as I rock into the slow rhythm of his languid strokes, my erection twice as sensitive for the lingering burn. “I _love_ Lizzie. I love our suh . . . _ah . . ._ I . . _._ ”

“Let go, Ciel,” He purrs, his strokes light, teasing, maddening. “Bare yourself. You know _I’m_ the only place you can. Unburden your heart of all those truths your soul cries out every time it touches mine. _Tell me who you love most truly.”_

I shove up against him with all of my strength, a sound that is half-sob, half-growl ripping from my throat, furious because I know exactly what he wants and I abhor the part of myself that begs to give him _everything._

His hand abandons our slickened pricks as he rolls onto his back and brings me atop him. Curses and declarations burn my tongue and I thrust it into his mouth knowing he’ll taste both and relish the flavor. Even that much is more than I should give him, but not near as much as I’d give if I allowed myself to speak.

_I’ve no hope of winning his game, and I’m weakening. Every day, a little more. I’ve lasted less than a month. How soon before it’s merely days? I’ll like have served him everything he wants on a silver platter by then, and wiped his mouth for him after. I’ve really no choice anymore . . ._

Pushing hard against the mattress, I lift my body, tearing my mouth from his and diverting my attention from the thrall of his beautiful face to the leanly sculpted musculature of his chest, a growl rumbling in mine as I allow carnal need to overcome my rational mind which seems hellbent on exposing the last ace I have tucked up my sleeve. He raises his head from the bed, and I can already taste his caramel-coated voice readying to damn me.

“Shut up,” I growl, shoving his head back down. I lave the column of his neck from collarbone to jaw and then breathe into his ear, “Just shut up and let me _show_ you who I love most.”

He responds with a moan, wanton and wholly inhuman, and I taste a feral spice, intoxicating and musky, bleed through the salty-sweet human facade of his skin as I kiss and nip my way back down his throat and over his chest to suckle at a blackening nipple. His fingers tangle into my hair, his onyx nails longer and sharper by the feel of their tenuous graze against my scalp as he presses my head to his breast, urging.

I fill my mouth with his flesh and bite savagely, teeth ripping through crushed velvet skin. Liquid heat floods over my tongue, thick and searing and more potent than the blackest licorice. Sebastian keens and holds my head more firmly to his breast. His cry sounds like the licentious exaltation of a profane and unholy mother, and it reverberates against the walls and over my body, prickling my skin with that primal warning possessed by prey to the lethal proximity of a predator. I shiver, my blood quickening, my muscles tensing, my cock throbbing, for my innate fear has long since warped into hunger and desire. I drink greedily, a starved babe sucking at the tit of my damnation, desperate to fill myself with the essence of my blessed, impending annihilation.

He cards his fingers through my hair, runs his palm over my back and croons fevered encouragement in an alien, lyrical language no human tongue could hope to replicate; a tongue not merely ancient, but eternal, speaking words I can’t intellectually comprehend, yet I viscerally understand the intensity of his pleasure, the greed of his desire, his insistence that he is _mine_ and his near-maddening yearning for me to devour him as wholly as he intends to eventually devour me.

My head feels lighter, my body infusing with the tingling warmth of inebriation wrought by his uninhibited confessions more so than by my consumption of the inky, bittersweet life-force coursing through the veins of his truer form. For, although I know he’s freed from compulsion to heed my orders, Sebastian does not lie. He does, indeed, _crave_ my affection, this monster I’ve unwittingly created. With my hapless, deranged love I’ve planted a seed in a barren garden and have somehow cultivated a covetous and ravenous weed intent on sapping the sun of all its radiance and vitality before it obliterates the cold, bitter stone that remains.

Of course, he still follows those orders he wants to heed. He relishes baiting such from me, and my demand he allow me to make love to him is certainly top among his favorites. Far from bemoaning my allowance of Sebastian’s manipulation, I am all too eager to taste every inch of him, to elicit those gasps and purrs and moans and growls the façade of his consummate butler would never, ever utter, to revel in the rapture of his unmasked expressions as I draw his pleasure from him and take my own.

Releasing and pursing my lips against Sebastian’s oozing nipple, I push my head hard against his grasp, my hands caressing the promise of my intent down the length of his svelte torso to coax against his reluctance, for although I’m already so drunk on him my physical craving has become a demanding need pulsing painfully at my groin, too much is never enough for Sebastian. I could drain him a thousand times over with no hope of appeasing his unassuageable appetite for the peculiar pleasure he derives from my consumption.  

With a bemoaned growl he relaxes his grip, his hand assuring my slow progress as I kiss my way across his chest to lavish attention on his other nipple, already hard as marble and black as coal. He hums his desire, his timbre pure seduction and undiluted lust and so compelling I bite down hard on my own tongue before my teeth can meet once more within his puckered areola and I glut myself anew.

The bright, sharp pain stabbing through my tongue takes the edge off the agony throbbing between my thighs. My mouth fills with copper and I rip my head out from beneath his grip, relishing the stinging pull of hair tearing from their roots as I shove upward, thrust my hands deep into Sebastian’s lengthened, silken mane and spill my blood into his fang-filled gasp.

With a covetous growl Sebastian seals our obscene kiss, thrusts his coarsened tongue into my mouth and draws mine into his. His fangs pierce into the wound, deepening it, setting my blood to flow in earnest, and he drinks as greedily as I had at his breast, his sharp nails leaving a trail of burning scratches from my shoulder blades to my buttocks before he clamps my hips between the vice of his thighs and drives his thick, iron cock hard against the length of mine. He swallows my gore-soaked cry of pleasure, and I feel us elevate several inches into the air as he abandons the last of his human façade and allows a massive set of ebony-feathered wings to erupt from between his shoulder blades.  

It’s all I can do to keep from rutting my cock against his and finishing myself like a gormless, randy dog as I hear those glorious wings spread across the bed, and I suddenly doubt my ability to make good on my demand to show him anything but a shameless beggar without a shred of pride or dignity. I want nothing more than to be enclosed within his wings, my senses oblivious to anything but him as he fucks me until I’m broken and bleeding, hanging to this mortal coil by a thin thread, forcing him, after, to abandon all false physicality and heal me should he decide he wants me to live. Already, my body craves the ether of his true form with which he has utterly and blissfully possessed me in the past, pouring himself into my every orifice, filling my insides, infusing my mind, my memories, my thoughts and emotions as he immerses himself within my every molecule inside and out . . .

I come, hard and helpless and sudden, my cock convulsing against Sebastian’s and bathing us both with violent spurts of thick, liquid heat as tremors wrack up over my spine and down my legs rendering me boneless. I melt atop him and feel his chuckle vibrate over my limp tongue before he suckles at the wound, no longer drawing blood, but healing it from the inside out.

Sebastian was right. My spend has flung open the gates previously closed to sleep, and as it rushes forward I would eagerly embrace it, but the incorrigible demon beneath me takes to caressing every inch of my backside with finger or feather as he kisses me with such tantalizing fervor my mouth hasn’t an option but to wake up and respond. He rocks his hips gently, his hot, taut prick sliding against mine, teasing my flagging attention back to alert interest.

Tension heats through my muscles and I shift my weight, my hands finding sleek, feathered purchase beneath either side of his chest. He moans as I weave my fingers into his wings and push myself slightly aloft, and I feel that rich rumble tingle over the inside of my spine and alight my every nerve, reenergizing me and replenishing my spent desire.

“Bastard,” I murmur, dragging my mouth from his and down over the ridge of his jaw. “If you wake me a moment before the clock chimes eight this morning, I _will_ have you exorcised. Surely, there’s a way.”

“Tempting,” he extends his throat to my questing tongue and teeth, his voice remiss of my butler’s silken, warm molasses and comprised instead of a wholly ethereal timbre that simultaneously chills and heats my blood. “It would amuse me to watch you try. And it would serve you right, so stubbornly you favor sleep above more effective energy sources at your ready disposal.”

I bite hard against his collarbone, breaking his alabaster skin and drawing ichor to the surface, which I lick away to chill the damning response burning the tip of my tongue. I need not inform him that I well know how I will spend my last remaining weeks should I decide to allow him to win his game. I can’t help wonder if he has the capacity to absolve me of all my basic human needs, thus shackling me with the chains of my own desperate cravings to my marriage bed with no hope of reprieve until my mortal cells finally exhaust their ability to utilize his infinite immortal energy and my body shrivels to a brittle husk beneath him.

I can fathom no sweeter, more perfect death.

“Ciel.” His fingers slip through my hair, his voice possessive, knowing, and entirely too smug.

I growl and force my focus back to the moment, the last, weakening shred of myself that doesn’t wholly belong to him hoping if I show him how completely he owns the rest of me it will somehow be enough to satisfy him, and knowing it will never be.

Even so, I hear myself whisper those three damnable words he so craves as I shift my body lower along his, my lips following a black vein from his collarbone to his sternum. I taste my way down his center, my fingers teasing velvet nipples taut before tracing over the ridges of his ribs. He arches his back, wings rustling anticipation, his voice crooning in that eternal language, imploring me to prove my devotion.

I inch ever lower, taking time to taste and savor every inch of his smooth, heated skin, relishing the rich flavor of my own bittersweet and salt mingling with and corrupting the purity of his dark and potent spices. I run my nose along the generous length of his taut, black cock as I lick his quivering abdomen clean, breathing deep the perfume of his arousal, a dizzying blend of freshly-turned earth and crisp, fallen leaves and wood-smoke. A dash of cinnamon. A hint of clove.

Fingers wrapping tightly in my hair, he rolls his hips, the glistening head of his pulsing prick seeking my mouth, and hisses a demand wrapped in hummed-pretense of invitation. Swallowing hard against my own ravenous appetite which begs to gorge on his sumptuous cock, I tease both of us by mapping the seam of his tight scrotum with my tongue before lunging lower and sinking my teeth into his inner thigh.

An inhuman cry rips from his throat, equal parts surprise and pain, frustration and pleasure. Such a sound would chill any other man to his core and stop his heart cold, but I grin and chuckle against his tensed muscle as I lick the sting out of my bite, reveling in this power I still retain over him. “Patience is a virtue,” I murmur, kissing my way down his leg, pausing to lavish special attention to the sensitive area beneath his knee. “All good things to those who wait.”

“Says the . . . ah . . .” Sebastian’s retort smothers beneath a shuddering moan as my mouth explores his shapely calf, one hand ruffling the feathers beneath his parted thighs in my wake. My bottom half suspends off the end of the bed supported by his undulating wingtips, his feathers caressing and teasing every inch of me, grazing rhythmically over my pulsing cock and encouraging the return of an inevitable demand I soon won’t have the fortitude to ignore. I lift his foot and run my tongue over the arc of his instep, making his toes curl and eliciting another long, quivering moan that hums through the length of my leaking erection.

Gasping, I fight the urge to thrust against his coaxing wings. I lift my head to see wisps of inky ether rising from the glistening path of my tongue and note again the evidence of my power, but rather than self-satisfaction, I feel absurdly honored and nearly overwhelmed with adulation for my demon, for this debauched monster to whom I would willingly sell my soul over and over and over again for nothing more than the privilege of nourishing him for a few moments of his endless eternity.

Deeply massaging the whole of his foot with both hands, I look up and meet his gaze, and glimpse, not for the first time, a very human expression of awed wonder within his inhuman eyes before he closes them and tosses his head back against the pillow, a deep rumbling rising from his chest. I continue to watch him, filled with my own sense of awed wonder wrought by my unconfirmed but certain knowledge that, although I’ve no doubt he has inspired the entire range of human emotions from utter loathing to unbridled lust, from awed admiration to mind-numbing terror, I am the only soul who has ever truly loved him.

This certainty overwhelms me, freezes me motionless as it sends me reeling, my mind searching for words to convey the swelling ache of emotion within me before it shreds my damned soul. A cry rips from my chest, an agonized, desperate, inhuman sound that snaps Sebastian’s head up from the pillow to regard me with widening eyes.

“Ciel.”    

My name isn’t an address, but a summons that pulls at my every fiber. Before I can even think to respond, I’m moving. Black tendrils like wisps of silk propel my body forward over Sebastian’s, the air surrounding us shimmering and crackling with energy.

“Inside,” he breathes against my temple as I gasp and grapple at his shoulders, trying to catch my bearings. “Now. Hurry.”

I push up against him, dizzy from the speed of my nearly instant change of position, and seek Sebastian’s eyes in search of an explanation for the urgent desperation I heard in his demand. His face is but a mere inch below mine, but I can barely see him through the thick, swirling darkness rising up from his skin. “Seb . . .”

“Now!” he growls, his body bucking violently beneath me, jostling me into position.

A sense of urgency prickles over my skin from nape to heels, and I thrust a trembling hand toward my cock, but he is already there, his fingers painting my own slick fluids over my straining shaft even as he guides me home. Thick tendrils of velvet shadow grip my buttocks and pull me deeper as his hand abandons my prick and glides up over my chest and around the back of my neck to tangle into my hair.

Already he’s milking the throbbing head of my prick, his hot, slick, silken muscles pulsating, begging me deeper. I bite viciously into my lower lip to stay my threatening climax and thrust inside of him to my hilt.

Our simultaneous cries split through the living shadows swirling between our bodies, mine a strangled roar as I fight to shore a splintering dam, his ringing of jubilant possession and unabashed pleasure, and I see him clearly, his back arching above stretching wings, abdominal muscles rolling tense beneath ivory skin and his taut, pulsing shaft of glistening onyx, his dark, lush bottom lip reemerging from beneath a perfect row of glittering fangs, eyes hidden beneath fluttering black lashes, and I am paralyzed, stunned breathless by his magnificence.

He opens his eyes, locking his gaze with mine, and I see within them not the familiar fires of hell, but the enormity of eternity; the sum total of everything equating to vast nothing forever, an endless emptiness that the damnation of his infinite consciousness manifests as ceaseless, gutting hunger . . .

I gasp, burning lungs shocked back into function by the realization that he has bared himself to me, and within the intensity of his stare I see a question.

“Yes,” I breathe, for my soul will brook no other answer. “Show me. Show me everything.”

He takes a deep breath and releases it slowly, his eyes closing as a soft smile plays over his dark lips, and then his hand tangled in my hair urges me forward. I stretch myself over him, hissing against the feel of his silken sheath releasing the bottom half of my oversensitive shaft and the delicious heat of his thick prick rutting against my abdomen as he arches up to greet me, thighs gripping my hips, his arms embracing and binding, wings unfurling and arcing to enclose us within a cocoon of warm darkness that caresses over every inch of my body not already pressed to his.

Everywhere. He’s everywhere, surrounding me, wrapping me within soft, living shadow like a second skin, infusing me with the impassioned heat of his kiss, and yet I’m overwhelmed again with a sense of desperation, aching for him even as I rock against him and feel him moving beneath me, matching my rhythm, his hot, slick arousal pulsing between us as I repeatedly submerge myself within him as deeply as I’m able while locked within the possessive cage of his embrace, my body trembling with the effort to endure the compounding intensity of physical ecstasy without shattering until I _find_ him.  

_Where are you?_

I hear within myself a child’s timbre trembling with horror and despair but not yet bereft of hope and faith, clutching tight to the fraying threads of his innocence and naivety, begging salvation from an absent God . . . the voice of my soul calling out . . .and I answer, allowing myself to seek out the boy I once was for the first time since I left him lying on that blood-soaked altar, a sacrifice made in exchange for vengeance and damnation.

_Ciel!_

My consciousness embraces and infuses with my soul, and I am suddenly both within and without myself, aware of my body moving with and within Sebastian’s and of the warmed brandy flavor of his tongue rolling against mine, of the feel of velvet shadow whispering against my skin, of his thick cock thrusting hard and long against my midriff and of the intense pleasure burning through my blood and threatening to explode at my core, and yet my physical body feels somehow distant, as if it exists only on the periphery of my essential self which needs not ears to hear or skin to feel or eyes to see.

_Sebastian . . ._

Just as I am not alone without, I sense neither am I alone within, and the very moment I realize that I need only look to see him, I do.

_Oh Holy God . . ._

Mirroring his chosen form, Sebastian’s soul is a study of contrasts; magnificence and monstrosity, radiance and ruination, divinity and damnation. He is a shimmering glow of the purest ivory shot through with twisted tendrils of corruption branching out from the pulsating edges of the jagged hole ripped through his center like a necrotic wound—a sucking abyss darker than black into which his pearly iridescence steadily flows.

My soul aches to fill that ravenous and infinite hole at his core even fully understanding the futility of such an endeavor will mean my annihilation, and I would lunge eagerly into that abyss if not for the restraining sense of certainty that such an attempt would bring an abrupt end to his baring and be perceived as my deplorable betrayal of his trust.

Instead I reach with tentative fingers that aren’t to touch that glimmering ivory glow, and the moment I connect with him I _know._ I know his every torment and pleasure, his every need and desire. I know the names and faces of every façade he’s ever worn and those of every soul he’s devoured. I know every change he’s wrought throughout the course of history, the plagues and disasters, the armies felled and the civilizations ruined on the whims of priests and kings. I know that he has always been, but he hasn’t always been _this,_ and I know all he knew of before, save for the deep, aching memory of having once been _whole,_ was ripped away with the heart of his soul along with the answers to who had cursed him thus and why.

I know the vibrant, radiant brilliance of my own soul as seen through his eyes and I feel how the purity of its reverent warmth has caressed the lingering filaments of his stolen core, soothing and smoothing those frayed and tattered threads like a healing salve, returning his lost, intimate conception of hope and stirring within the strengthened gossamers a specific and avaricious hunger all their own, and I _know . . ._ I _know . . ._ I _understand_. . .

The voracious chasm at Sebastian’s center is smaller now than it was when first he responded to the call of my soul’s utter despair. The reduction is miniscule, but clearly evidenced by a thin, greyish contour created by the interknitting of those rejuvenating threads; a line which rings the angry edges of his corruption and pushes them inward.

Drawn by the compulsion to facilitate the thickening of that line, I dare to touch it. The instant, violent recoil of Sebastian’s soul sends mine reeling, thrusting me back into physical consciousness where I am naught but a body tensed within the excruciating grip of pleasure, nothing but a gasping and grunting extension of my every tingling nerve-ending and taut, driving cock, lost to everything but sensation and the sound of his voice roaring my name as he bucks and shudders and bathes me in his scalding release, his insides clenching around me, demanding, pulling me deeper within, rendering me helpless against that leaking dam which suddenly explodes with a burst of blinding light and rips the air from my lungs as I’m swept beneath the raging deluge.

I surface slowly, my first awareness that of silk sliding against my bare skin as I shift from my back onto my side. From somewhere above, I hear a grandfather clock chime four times, and I moan Sebastian’s name, knowing even as I reach out for him that I am alone in his bed.

Opening my eyes, I see he’s left a lantern burning on low flame atop his desk and a solitary black feather lying upon the pillow beside mine. Iridescent even within the dim light, his silent message promises his imminent return and asks me to wait for him.

I want to wait. I want welcome him back into my arms and hold him and tell him he’s won and promise him spoils which aren’t mine to give. I want desperately to ignore the mental image of Lizzie smiling up at me with undiluted joy, our son at her breast . . . which is why I force my reluctant muscles out of their stupor and climb out of bed. On legs that feel nearly boneless, I walk slowly across the room and retrieve my robe from where it lays neatly draped over the back of his chair.

By the time I make my cautious way through the dark hallways of the servants’ quarters and emerge into the empty kitchen, the familiar tension has taken hold of my body again. I sweep my gaze throughout the darkened room as I pass through just to be sure, but I’m not surprised to discover Sebastian absent from this particular haunt, for I know there is only one reason with the power to compel him to leave me asleep alone in his bed.

The moment I reach the top of the staircase I hear him singing softly, the smooth, caramel-coated timbre of his voice carrying on the still quiet through the open door of the nursery. Even though I know I should turn sharply to the right, stride briskly to my bedchamber and allow the sight of my sleeping wife the chance to restore the last fraying thread of resolve I’d still possessed when I’d left her, I pause to listen.

Sebastian croons his hushed lullaby in that eternal language, and it resonates within me such a sweet sense of calm that I’m compelled to the source.

The moment I slip into the nursery and see them together, Sebastian wearing his butler’s façade sans gloves and tailcoat, swaying gently on his feet, his crimson gaze locked with the cerulean stare of my year-old son cradled in his arms, I know I was wrong in the belief that mine is the only soul who has ever loved my demon. Alex looks up at Sebastian rapt and with blatant adoration, one small, chubby hand clasped firmly against Sebastian’s cheek.

I watch them, my heart sinking as it cracks and bleeds, my skin prickling cold as I understand that I’ve understood next to nothing of Sebastian’s _game_ and as I realize the stakes go far beyond my self-important and ridiculously erroneous assumptions. To think I’d convinced myself it was all about _me,_ that I’d made myself believe he coveted Lizzie’s and Alex’s souls because _I_ loved them and he would have me sacrifice them as proof of my utter devotion to him, that he’d desired to first consume every last morsel of my heart before he devoured the grand prize of my soul . . . but had he not just shown me my soul was, ultimately, nothing more than a drop in a bottomless bucket? Had he not just blatantly told me the nature of his hunger had changed and shown me why?

Did he suspect from the first that the souls of my potential children might inherit their father’s unique depravity? Did he anticipate singing lullabies to my replacement as he so vehemently insisted I marry Elizabeth when I sought to secure her future with another?

Were I to disregard the bitter jealousy chilling my blood, after having borne witness to the atrocity his soul suffers, could I truly disparage him for endeavoring to heal? Have I not facilitated within him the redemption I’ve so deeply desired to become?

_Yes. But at what price?_

I look at my son, who, with his thick, golden ringlets and ready smile would be the very mirror of his perfect mother had he not inherited my eyes. I remember the day he was born, how I had stared and stared into his perfect blues, searching intently for the barest hint of a mar hidden within their depths and wishing they were green. I remember the tears of startled bewilderment that had flooded Lizzie’s eyes when I’d harshly rebuked her suggestion we give him my father’s name and declared he would be Alexis Edward. The Phantomhive name was plenty curse enough, and I vowed I would do everything in my power to protect him from all others.

And now . . . now . . .

Alex lies with perfect, trusting contentment in the arms of a demon and smiles up at him with sleepy blue eyes, softly babbling along to the tune Sebastian sings. And when I shift my gaze to Sebastian’s face and see within his soft expression traces of that same reverence I so often imagine I perceive when _I_ am lying in his arms, I realize I’ve been, perhaps deliberately, blind. From the first, Sebastian has been protective of and dutiful to the boy, but I’d arrogantly assumed he acted thus in deference to his voluntarily continued service to _me._ So obtuse I’d been, chuckling silently to myself as I watched Lizzie and her mother fume each time Sebastian produced evidence of a prior scandal or worrisome work ethic within the history of each poor nursemaid they’d interviewed, thus preventing them from hiring the women and forcing Lizzie to make due with Paula and Mey-Rin and, often, Sebastian himself for assistance with Alex’s care.  

I’m not sure whether I want to sweep my son out of Sebastian’s arms or wrap my own around the both of them, but I’m compelled forward. The quick dart of Sebastian’s gaze to mine and the minute shake of his head halt my approach. Standing frozen, I watch my son’s small hand drift down from Sebastian’s face as his eyelids droop shut. Sebastian’s song fades to a faint hum. He slowly glides to the crib, first touching his lips lightly to Alex’s brow before settling him down within.

He motions me forward as he straightens from his task, his gaze still on my sleeping son as I ease up to the crib beside him. “He was trying to convince himself he was peckish, when all he really craved was a spot of attention,” Sebastian whispers. “So very much like his father.”

Asleep, his sweet face relaxed, Alex is Lizzie made over. “He’s nothing like me,” I sneer. “You’re deluding yourself, Sebastian, if you believe that he’ll eventually become . . .”

“Shh,” Sebastian’s hand cups my cheek and he gently turns my face toward his as he ushers us a few steps back from the crib. “If he wakes and sees you, there’ll be no settling him again. Much like me, he craves your attention above all others, for he receives so little of it.”

“Are you seriously attempting to _sweet talk_ me right now, Sebas . . .”

He claps a palm over my mouth, his jaw clenching beneath a warning smile as he pulls me to the far side of the room. “Do you actually believe I intend for him to _replace_ you?” Sebastian breathes as he drops his hand from my face. “Have I not repeatedly made it perfectly clear that you’re exceptional in my regard, Ciel?”

 _If only I could fathom a way to forever keep my cake and eat it too . . ._ My overwrought mind spins, and I grasp hold of his waist to steady myself as I attempt to make sense of everything. “You no longer have any intention of devouring my soul, do you.”

“Quite the contrary. Upon the occurrence of your body’s inevitable death, I anticipate your glorious soul will appease my damning hunger for quite some time. A century, at least. Likely more.” He drapes his arms around my waist and draws me closer. “Even so, I will endeavor to do everything within my power to delay my dinner plans for as long as possible, Ciel.”

“Why?” I whisper, trembling with the intensity of my warring emotions. “After everything you’ve shown me, and seeing you with Alex just now . . . I felt . . . I know he’s healing your soul, Sebastian, the same as I am. Perhaps if you weren’t starving, the process . . .”

“Yes, his soul possesses what I feared was the singular ability of yours to commune with mine,” he murmurs, and then brushes a feathery kiss over my lips, “but it’s not at all the _same_.”

“Not now. Not _yet,_ but . . .”

“No. Not ever, Ciel,” Sebastian sighs and chuckles. “Honestly, how many times do I have to tell you that you’re a brilliant anomaly in my endless existence?”

My heart hiccups. “Are you trying to tell me that you _love_ me, Sebastian?”

“I’m telling you that far beyond the purity of your affection that has so altered my existence, I truly do _crave_ all of your attentions, Ciel. You inspire within me such passionate, singular lust and greed, the likes of which I’ve never known before and know I shall not experience again. I anticipate your death with foreboding apprehension, because I understand I will grieve your loss so intensely it may gut my soul anew. But love? Perhaps the concept was something I understood _before,_ but I can’t be certain. Perhaps a millennium from now, if I can be made whole again, I’ll know. And should I discover my ability to give you what your soul most desires was ripped away, the wrath of my vengeance upon the wretched thief will surely tear a hole through the fabric of eternity.”

Dark energy rises from his form, threatening to become a crackling shroud. Although I would revel in his confession, which is so far beyond anything I’d ever dared hope to elicit from him, and although I ache to exacerbate his desire for vengeance right _now,_ it is neither the time nor the place. I tear my gaze from the thrall of his to the crib where Alex sleeps, oblivious, for the moment. “A _millennium_ , Sebastian? Surely, you don’t expect it will take so long to heal.” I chuckle lightly at the absurdity of the thought that strikes me, “Do you intend to remain the Phantomhive butler, serving tea to my heirs, hoping beyond hope each new successor will possess the necessary quality of soul for the next thousand years?”

“It’s very early on, but your wife suspects what I’ve known for two weeks,” he says quietly, and the tentativeness I hear in his voice draws my attention immediately back to his face to see his rage retreating behind his softening expression. “You will have a daughter, Ciel. Already, her soul speaks to me.”

Whatever emotions that rise within me upon this revelation are engulfed by sick incredulity as I’m walloped by the realization of his intentions. “No . . . no . . . you can’t mean to breed them like cattle.”

“You make it sound so crass,” he admonishes, his embrace tightening against my attempt to back away. “Brothers and sisters, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters . . . cousins,” he smiles. “Such conceptions have always given rise to human populations, be it by necessity or societal ideals or natural desire.”

“Be that as it may, Sebastian, my children are English nobility, and _this_ society will not tolerate your inane notion of raising them to become your perverse Adam and Eve.” I seethe, bile burning my throat. I shove hard against his chest. “Nor will their _parents.”_

He releases me, but steadily holds my glare. “I shall exact my vengeance upon the perpetrators of my desecration by _any_ means, Ciel. Certainly you, who stopped at nothing and no one to exact yours, should understand.”

Strength drains from my bones, and the sudden horror of my utter understanding answers my question even as I ask, “You would do this to me?”

His arms encircle me as I sink on weak legs and hold me upright. “I much desire to proceed _with_ you, when the time comes,” he says, and I see the truth of his words echoed in the warmth of his regard. “There are places where we can raise them together, you and I, far from the leashes of Queens and the ignorant intolerances of noble society. _Our_ children would want for nothing, Ciel. I give you my solemn vow.”

He speaks the unfathomable . . . a life without the crown’s collar, without business meetings or dreaded societal events . . . “Lizzie,” I murmur.

“Is not invited,” Sebastian finishes, and then presses his lips warm against mine.

So easily I could lose myself in his deepening kiss, for it tastes of the life he’s promised. A life without the necessity of facades, a life in which I could forever be the man Lizzie wishes I was, the man I can only ever be with _him_ . . . and I want it. I want it so badly it terrifies me and sends me scrambling for the safety of those very facades I’ve come to loathe since I’d exacted my vengeance and thus realized my reason for being.

I rip out of our kiss, gasping. “And what if I won’t leave Lizzie? What if I won’t abandon my responsibilities to go play house with you, Sebastian? Do you intend to devour us both before you abscond with our children?”

“I see no reason to ponder over every eventuality right at the moment,” Sebastian’s voice lilts with humor. “You’ll have several years in which to consider everything you’ve learned over the past few hours before you’re pressed into making decisions. Should you find any particular concern exceptionally worrisome, I’ll be happy to discuss it when next you visit my bed.”

“You smug bastard.”

“Indeed,” he smirks, and his hands graze sensually over my silk-clad buttocks before he steps back and reaches up to straighten the lapels of my robe. “And on that note, I think it might be prudent you return to _your_ bed, Young Master, and settle in before your wife wakes to the ache of her breasts and rises to feed Young Master Alexis, wouldn’t you agree?”

He’s handing me my mask, granting me much needed retreat, I understand. Even so I glare at him, incredulous. “You can’t seriously expect me to _sleep_ after . . . after . . .” I gesture to the crib, “ _everything_.”

“I only suggested you go to bed, My Lord. I made no mention of sleep. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go and make myself presentable. It’s nearly time to wake the household staff.”

Without waiting for granted leave, he turns on his heel and strides out of the nursery, leaving me standing gape-jawed and staring at the empty doorway.

To my right, Alex shifts and gurgles in his crib, pulling me out of my stupor. Standing stock still and barely daring to breathe, I listen as he settles himself and sighs back into sleep. I wait for a few moments longer, and then tread slowly out of the room, taking a long, deep breath as I step out into the hallway.

Barefoot and wearing nothing more than my robe, I have little choice but to return to my bedchamber. When I ease inside the darkened room, my gaze draws immediately to Lizzie. Still blessedly asleep, she is sprawled out on her back upon her side of our bed, her arms flung above her head, one swollen breast exposed by the lay of the sheet which covers her. She’s breathtaking, this woman whom I’ve so wronged with my very existence. My sweet and fiercely loyal Lizzie, who would be at this very moment wrapped safe in the arms of a man who cherished her if I’d had the courtesy to stay dead after she’d buried me those many years ago. She’d be safe in the arms of a man who would willingly die fighting for her before even entertaining the thought of allowing a demon to steal her children.

Instead of passing through to the dressing room as I’d intended, I shrug out of my robe and slip into bed beside her, my chaotic thoughts finding focus on that last card still tucked up my sleeve.  

Groaning softly, she curls onto her side with her back to me just like she always does on mornings I return from Sebastian’s bed, as if she senses my betrayal. Perhaps she does.

 _I can never take it back, Lizzie. I can’t even tell you I would if I could. Still, maybe, I could make amends,_ I think as I shift onto my side to look at her. I pick up a golden tendril of her hair from the edge of her pillow, threading it through my fingers as I think of the pistol I once kept beneath mine, a gun that now resides within the drawer of my bedside table.

I know well the taste of the gun’s barrel, so many times I’ve placed it in my mouth over the course of these past five years, my thoughts sharply focused on the ledger or correspondence he’d assumed me working, my finger on the trigger and a mere half pound of pressure from sending my brain splattering against the wall.

Although he has saved my life countless times since his services became voluntary, including the once I dared test my hypothesis by vividly imagining one of my footman’s more venomous friends about to strike my hand as I stood in the rose garden, not once has Sebastian appeared while I’ve mentally placed myself at my desk and imagined going about my tasks with quiet calm, a split second away from death.

I’d considered the possibility he might simply see fit to grant me the luxury of suicide, but immediately dismissed such a generous idea. The truth was he simply didn’t _know._ Only his ignorance would have kept him away.

Sebastian does not lie. Even so, I’ve long since learned to listen for the heart of his truths beating outside of his spoken words and within his evasions. While I harbor no doubts that he seeks to delay his consumption of my soul for all of his confessed reasons, and while I wholeheartedly believe he truly desires my company, I only too intimately understand the all-consuming lust for vengeance that has become his reason for being. All other desires, no matter how intense, pale beneath the shadow of that vibrant lust.

With his avoidance of my question, I learned that his consumption of my soul would, indeed, facilitate the speed of his healing. Yet, he still hopes to delay utilizing such rich sustenance even after he whisks the souls he believes will insure his restoration away to his described utopia. Souls that do not belong to him, as mine does.

The truth is he will keep me alive for only so long as he necessitates the shelter our contract affords. They’re waiting for him, the reapers, all too eager to run him out of their territory the moment our dissolved bond unleashes him—at which point he’d be fortunate to abscond with his own hide, much less my children.

Should I end myself, I know there would be no restoration for Sebastian. No vengeance. Only the eternal conscious torment born from a recovered sense of hope that would serve to do nothing more than add depth to the agony of his constant hunger.

 _I only ever offered him my soul,_ I lie to myself as I curl around my wife. I drape my arm over her hip and lay my palm atop her warm, flat belly which will soon begin to swell. A daughter, Sebastian said, and I doubt him not at all.

Closing my eyes, I nestle my face against the fan of Lizzie’s soft hair and imagine her—a little girl with dark, spiraling curls and her mother’s sparkling green eyes. I see her running through a meadow of wildflowers, hand-in-hand with her brother, and I hear their delighted laughter ringing on the warm breeze. I feel that soft wind tease through my hair, carrying with it the scent of lavender and the whisper of Sebastian’s promise of a life without in which they would never want for anything.

In my mind’s eye, I see Sebastian restored, his fully realized wrath a force so magnificent it shatters the heavens and sends the sky falling in blazing streaks of molten rock which crack and split the earth asunder as he exacts his vengeance on God Himself.

 _An eye for an eye. A wound for a wound_ , I think as I imagine the world falling into the abyss of God’s corrupted soul, and as I smile, I see my last ace swirl away into that ravenous darkness.  


End file.
